Illinois campaign

The Illinois campaign (July 1778-February 1779) was a campaign of the American Revolutionary War that was fought on the American frontier in what is now Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio. Virginia militia general George Rogers Clark succeeded in claiming territory half the size of the Thirteen Colonies for the state of Virginia, and the territory would later become the "Northwest Territory".

The Native Americans on the American frontier mostly sided with the British during the revolution, as they felt that they would stand a better chance of resisting colonist incursions as an ally of Great Britain. In 1778, the Virginia explorer George Rogers Clark came up with a plan to stop the raids: he would attack the undermanned British forts in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois and extend Virginia's boundaries to an area nearly the size of Europe. On 26 June 1778, Clark and 175 frontiersmen shot the rapids of the Ohio River into enemy territory, and Clark ensured his men that the solar eclipse was a good omen. He got his men to the Tennessee River after four days, and his men hacked their way through 50 miles of wilderness. On 4 July 1778, Clark and his men arrived near the British-held town of Kaskaskia, and, within fifteen minutes, they surrounded the town's fort and captured it without firing a shot. The French settlers were relieved to hear that France and America were now allies. 180 miles away, French settlers in Indiana happily greeted news of the alliance by turning over the fort of Vincennes to Virginia, and Clark sent just three soldiers to defend the fort. Six months later, the fort was retaken by Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton, nicknamed "the Hair-Buyer" for his purchasing of rebel scalps, so Clark and his 150 poorly-supplied troops set out to recapture the fort in February 1779. The soldiers had to march across flooded country and chest-deep icy water, but none of them deserted, and they felt superior to other soldiers due to their durability.

Seventeen days after setting out, Clark's band arrived a mile from the fort, and Clark divided his men and told them to make as much noise as they could, giving the illusion that the Americans had more men. Hamilton assumed that drunken locals were firing off their guns until one of his men fell from a rifle shot. The next morning, Clark demanded Hamilton's immediate surrender, but Hamilton refused. That afternoon, the Americans captured an Indian raiding party, including the young Odawa chief Macutte Mong, and the Indians were tomahawked in full view of the fort. The Indians began singing their own death songs, and Macutte Mong survived three tomahawk blows before being thrown into the river to his death. Hamilton was intimidated by the display, and Clark was still wiping blood from his hands when he met Hamilton. The next morning, Hamilton surrendered the fort.

When his campaign was over, Clark had claimed for Virginia a land half the size of the Thirteen Colonies, but the land would continue to be a battleground between the British and their Indian allies and the Americans for the rest of the war. The "Illinois Country" was later made into the "Northwest Territory".